Friday, 19 October 2018

The latest project Portugal 1809 has placed all my ancient
activity temporarily on hold and after a suspension of nearly two months one begins
to feel ‘stale’. As my regular DBA sparring partner was away I managed a
solo game between Rome (Middle Imperial) against the Marcomanni.

To make this an interesting exercise, I decided to increase each
command from 12 to 18 elements with the loss of one third ending the game. Keep in
mind, by adding the extra elements this would place a strain on ‘pip’ usage and
lengthen the game somewhat.

The Marcomanni were defending their forest region and a series of fortuitous die casts covered each quadrant with a terrain piece; three woods and one hamlet. The woods offered the Marcomanni coverage
for both flanks, but hampered the deployment of their cavalry and these were
placed in a second line behind the centre.

Anticipating a wild rush forward, the Romans formed
two groups in echelon formation with a third group held back as a reserve. The
bulk of the cavalry were placed on the right flank, beyond the wood, with an
objective to encircle the barbarian horde and strike their rear.

The
opening moves.

Fortuna was in a frivolous mood this night and held the barbarian
pip scores low, but did Rome no great favour by giving them 'just a bit more' to
play with. This forced the Marcomanni to concentrate their efforts on
developing a flank assault on their right while the main body ‘shuffled’ forward.

The Marcomanni did inflict a casualty on the Roman
left and this had the effect of drawing the attention of the left group away from the central attack.

Despite the assault on the left flank, the Roman
second group held their position to await the eventual onslaught of the
Marcomanni centre. The encircling manoeuvre by the Roman cavalry had advanced far enough to draw the
attention of the Marcomanni cavalry.

Middle game

Containing the Roman left wing opened an opportunity for
the Marcomanni to breach a gap between the two groups. The effect was immediate
as Roman losses were severe enough to call up the reserve group. Up to this point, the
Marcomanni had incurred no losses against Rome’s two.

Events took a serious turn as the entire reserve
formation consisting of a unit of Praetorians and two of the 1st
Parthia fell to the Marcomanni fury. The loss of a single Marcomanni warband
was small compensation for the horrendous loss and the fast approach of break point
(5 – 1).

End game

Fortuna finally grinned and blessed Rome with a series
of high pip scores unleashing some remarkable Roman wizardry. The last of the
reserve, the Praetorian cavalry were thrown in and the general led his own
guard onto the dense barbarian columns and together with the legionnaires and auxilia
redoubling their efforts brought the score even, 5 – 5.

Fickle as ever, Fortuna made a quick exit to leave
Rome with a ‘1’ as their next pip score. Rather than force a new combat that bound,
the Roman commander regrouped his own guard alongside the Praetorians. The Marcomanni did no better on their own bound leaving Rome to deliver the needed blow to end the game, 5 – 6 for
Rome.

Some
thoughts

The battle was played on an 80cm x 80cm board and took
less than an hour and ten turns to complete. Despite the increased number of
elements, there was ample room for troops to move about. Pip scores were
average or slightly less which forced both Marcomanni and Rome to not overplay
their game. The Marcomanni did well to focus on one flank before assaulting the
Roman centre, this approach nearly won them the battle.

After launching the Roman cavalry wing I immediately
had second thoughts if this was a wise move. It did however occupy the Marcomanni
cavalry so they did not participate in the main battle which may have been a
blessing.